»An indictment of the people and the President

Bumped into Adam yesterday, who loaned me a copy of Sleepwalking Through History. I read with some alarm the first two chapters, on Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, and titled "The Loser" and "The Winner" respectively. As Carter spent a sleepless final week in office, negotiating the terms of release for the Iranian hostages, Reagan showed little inclination to do other than sleep and party his way to Inauguration.

I blame the subway:

Appearing on ABC's "This Week With David Brinkley" after the [arms procurement] scandal began, Arkansas Senator David Pryor described it this way: "A few yards from here is Connecticut Avenue, and we all see the beautiful hotels and office buildings and grand shops, but underneath there's a subway system that is running day and night where people are getting on and they're getting off.... Some of the poeple that are getting off that subway ... have either been with the Department of Defense or with a private consulting firm. They go to a contractor. They're in the Pentagon private consulting firms or their own contractors, and they're all sloshing around in the subway system with all of this money and we're in trouble because of it."